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Alice
''' '''Alice is a fictional character, the young Protaganist of Lewis Carroll's children's novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871). A child in the mid-Victorian era, Alice unintentionally goes on an underground adventure after accidentally falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland; in the sequel, she steps through a mirror into an alternative world. Origins The character originated in stories told by Carroll to entertain the Liddell sisters while rowing on the Isis with his friend Robinson Duckworth, and on subsequent rowing trips. Although she shares her given name with Alice Liddell, scholars disagree about the extent to which she was based upon Liddell. Characterized by Carroll as "loving and gentle", "courteous to all", "trustful", and "wildly curious",1 Alice has been variously seen as clever, well-mannered, and sceptical of authority, although some commentators find more negative aspects of her personality. Her appearance changed from Alice's Adventures Under Ground, the first draft of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to political cartoonist John Tenniel's illustrations of her in the two Alice books. Alice has been identified as a cultural icon. She has been described as a departure from the usual nineteenth-century child protagonist, and the success of the two Alice books inspired numerous sequels, parodies, and imitations, with protagonists similar to Alice in temperament. She has been interpreted through various critical approaches, and has appeared and been re-imagined in numerous adaptations, including Walt Disney's film (1951). Her continuing appeal has been ascribed to her ability to be continuously re-imagined. Character Alice is a fictional child living during the middle of the Victorian era.2 In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which takes place on 4 May,1 the character is widely assumed to be seven years old;34 Alice gives her age as seven and a half in the sequel, which takes place on 4 November.3 In the text of the two Alice books, author Lewis Carroll often did not remark on the physical appearance of his protagonist.5 Details of her fictional life can be discovered from the text of the two books. At home, she has a significantly older sister, a brother,6 a pet cat named Dinah, an elderly nurse, and a governess, who teaches her lessons starting at nine in the morning.7 Additionally, she had gone to a day school at some point in her backstory.7 Alice has been variously characterised as belonging to the upper class,89 middle class,2 or part of the bourgeoisie.10 When writing on her personality in "Alice on the Stage" (April 1887), Carroll described her as "loving and gentle", "courteous to all", "trustful", and "wildly curious, and with the eager enjoyment of Life that comes only in the happy hours of childhood, when all is new and fair, and when Sin and Sorrow are but names — empty words signifying nothing!"1 Commentators characterise her as "innocent",11 "imaginative",7 introspective,7 generally well-mannered,29 critical of authority figures,2 and clever.11 Others see less positive traits in Alice, writing that she frequently shows unkindness in her conversations with the animals in Wonderland,12 takes violent action against the character Bill the Lizard by kicking him into the air,13 and reflects her social upbringing in her lack of sensitivity and impolite replies.13 According to Donald Rackin, "In spite of her class- and time-bound prejudices, her frightened fretting and childish, abject tears, her priggishness and self-assured ignorance, her sometimes blatant hypocrisy, her general powerlessness and confusion, and her rather cowardly readiness to abandon her struggles at the ends of the two adventures—.... many readers still look up to Alice as a mythic embodiment of control, perseverance, bravery, and mature good sense."10 The degree to which the character of Alice can be identified as Alice Liddell is controversial. Some critics identify the character as Liddell,1214 or write that she inspired the character.15 Others argue that Carroll considered his protagonist and Liddell to be separate.1617 According to Carroll, his character was not based on any real child, but was entirely fictional.18 Development Alice debuted in Carroll's first draft of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice's Adventures Under Ground.1 Under Ground originated from stories told to the Liddell sisters during an afternoon on 4 July 18621 while rowing on the Isis with his friend Robinson Duckworth, and on subsequent rowing trips.2 At the request of ten-year-old Alice Liddell, Carroll wrote down the stories as Alice's Adventures Under Ground, which he completed in February 1864.2 Under Ground contains thirty-seven illustrations,2 twenty-seven of which Alice is depicted in.3 As his drawings of Alice bear little physical resemblance to Alice Liddell, whose given name she shares, it has been suggested that Alice's younger sister, Edith, might have been his model.4 He portrays his protagonist as wearing a tunic, in contrast to the tailored dresses that the Liddell sisters might have worn.5 His illustrations drew influence from the Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, whose painting The Lady with the Lilacs (1863) he visually alluded to in one drawing in Under Ground.6 He gave the hand-written Alice's Adventures Under Ground to Alice Liddell in November 1864.7 John Tenniel illustrated Alice Adventures in Wonderland (1865) for a fee of £138, which was roughly a fourth of what Carroll earned each year and which he paid for himself.8 Tenniel was an already successful, well-known lead illustrator for the satirical magazine Punch,9 when Carroll employed him as an illustrator in April 1864.10 In contrast, Carroll did not have any literary fame at the time.10 Tenniel likely based the majority of his illustrations on those in Under Ground,11 and Carroll carefully oversaw his work;12 among his suggestions was that Alice should have long, light-coloured hair.12 Alice's clothes are typical of what a girl belonging to the middle class in the mid-Victorian era might have worn at home.13 Her pinafore, a detail created by Tenniel and now associated with the character, "suggests a certain readiness for action and lack of ceremony".14 Tenniel's depiction of Alice has its origins in a physically similar character which appeared in at least eight cartoons in Punch, during a four-year period that began in 1860.13 In an 1860 cartoon, this character wore clothes now associated with Alice: "the full skirt, pale stockings, flat shoes, and a hairband over her loose hair".13 In the cartoons, the character appeared as an archetype of a pleasant girl from the middle classes;15 she has been described as similar to Alice: "a pacifist and non interventionist, patient and polite, slow to return the aggression of others".16 Tenniel's fee for illustrating the sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871) rose to £290, which Carroll again paid for out of his own pocket.8 Tenniel changed Alice's clothing slightly in the sequel, where she wears horizontal-striped stockings instead of plain ones and has a more ornate pinafore with a bow.13 Originally, Alice wore a "crinoline-supported chess manlike skirt" similar to that of the Red and White Queens, as a queen; the design was rejected by Carroll.17 Her clothing as a queen and in the railway carriage is a polonaise-styled dress with a bustle, which would have been fashionable at the time.13 The clothing worn by the characters in "My First Sermon" (1863) by pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais and "The Traveling Companions" (1862) by Victorian painter Augustus Leopold Egg have some elements in common with Alice's clothing in the railway carriage.18 Carroll expressed unhappiness at Tenniel's refusal to use a model for illustrations of Alice,1 writing that this resulted in her head and feet being out of proportion.20 In February 1881, Carroll contacted his publisher about the possibility of creating The Nursery "Alice", a simplified edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with colored and enlarged illustrations.21 Tenniel colored twenty illustrations from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in addition to revising some aspects of them;22 Alice is depicted as a blonde, and her dress is yellow, with blue stockings.23 Her dress became pleated with a bow at the back of it, and she wore a bow in her hair.24 Edmund Evans printed the illustrations in color through chromoxylography, a process using woodblocks to produce color prints.24 Cultural Impact Alice has been recognised as a cultural icon.434445 The Alice books have continued to remain in print,46 and the first book is available in a hundred languages.47 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has continued to maintain its popularity, placing on surveys of the top children's books.484950 Alice placed on a 2015 British survey of the top twenty favorite characters in children's literature.49 She also lends her name to the style of headband that she is depicted with in Tenniel's illustrations.51 The continued popularity of the two Alice books has resulted in numerous adaptations, re-imaginings, literary continuations, and various merchandise.43 The influence of the two Alice books in the literary field began as early as the mid-Victorian era, with various novels that adopted the style, acted as parodies of contemporary political issues, or reworked an element of the Alice books;523 they featured one or more protagonists with characteristics similar to Alice's ("typically polite, articulate, and assertive"), regardless of gender.54 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass were critically and commercially successful in Carroll's lifetime;55 more than 150,000 copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and 100,000 copies of Through the Looking-Glass had been printed by 1898.56 Victorian readers generally enjoyed the Alice books as lighthearted entertainment that omitted the stiff morals which other books for children frequently included.57 In its review of the first Alice book, The Spectator described Alice as a "a charming little girl, ... with a delicious style of conversation," while The Publisher's Circular lauded her as "a simple, loving child."58 Several reviewers thought that Tenniel's illustrations added to the book, with The Literary Churchman remarking that Tenniel's art of Alice provided "a charming relief to the all the grotesque appearances which surround her."59 Alice's character has been highlighted by later literary critics as unusual or a departure from the typical mid-nineteenth-century child protagonists.606162 Richard Kelly sees the character as Carroll's creation of a different protagonist through his reworking of the Victorian orphan trope. According to Kelly, Alice must rely on herself in Wonderland away from her family, but the moral and societal narrative arc of the orphan is replaced with Alice's intellectual struggle to maintain her sense of identity against the inhabitants of Wonderland.62 Alison Lurie argues that Alice defies the gendered, mid-Victorian conceptions of the idealized girl: Alice does not have a temperament in keeping with the ideal, and she challenges the adult figures in Wonderland.60 From the 1930s to 1940s, the books came under the scrutiny of psychoanalytic literary critics.63 Freudians believed that the events in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reflected the personality and desires of the author,64 because the stories which it was based on had been told spontaneously.65 In 1933, Anthony Goldschmidt introduced "the modern idea of Carroll as a repressed sexual deviant",66 theorizing that Alice served as Carroll's representation in the novel;67 Goldschmidt's influential work, however, may have been meant as a hoax.66 Regardless, Freudian analysis found in the books symbols of "classic Freudian tropes": "a vaginal rabbit hole and a phallic Alice, an amniotic pool of tears, hysterical mother figures and impotent father figures, threats of decapitation castration, swift identity changes".68 Described as "the single greatest rival of Tenniel," Walt Disney created an influential representation of Alice in his 1951 film adaptation, which helped to mould the image of Alice within pop culture.69 Although Alice had previously been depicted as a blonde in a blue dress in an unauthorised American edition of the two Alice books published by Thomas Crowell (1893), possibly for the first time,70 Disney's portrayal has been the most influential in solidifying the popular image of Alice as such.3271 Disney's version of Alice has its visual basis in Mary Blair's concept drawings32 and Tenniel's illustrations.69 While the film was not successful during its original run,71 it later became popular with college students, who interpreted the film as a drug-drenched narrative.72 In 1974, Alice in Wonderland was re-released in the United States, with advertisements playing off this association.72 The drug association persists as an "unofficial" interpretation, despite the film's status as family-friendly entertainment.72 In the twenty-first century, Alice's continuing appeal has been attributed to her ability to be continuously re-imagined.32 In Men in Wonderland, Catherine Robson writes that, "In all her different and associated forms—underground and through the looking glass, textual and visual, drawn and photographed, as Carroll's brunette or Tenniel's blonde or Disney's prim miss, as the real Alice Liddell ... Alice is the ultimate cultural icon, available for any and every form of manipulation, and as ubiquitous today as in the era of her first appearance."45 Robert Douglass-Fairhurst compares Alice's cultural status to "something more like a modern myth," suggesting her ability to act as an empty canvas for "abstract hopes and fears" allows for further "meanings" to be ascribed to the character.73 Zoe Jacques and Eugene Giddens suggest that the character occupies a status within pop culture where "Alice in a blue dress is as ubiquitous as Hamlet holding a skull," which creates "the strange position whereby the public 'knows' Alice without having read either Wonderland or Looking-Glass."74 They argue that this allows for creative freedom in subsequent adaptations, in that faithfulness to the texts can be overlooked.74 In Japan, Alice has a significant influence on pop culture. Tenniel's artwork and Disney's film adaptation have been credited as factors in the continuing favorable reception of the two novels.75 Within youth culture in Japan, she has been adopted as "a rebellion figure in much the same way as the American and British 1960s 'hippies' did."76 She has also been a source of inspiration for Japanese fashion, in particular Lolita fashion.75 Her popularity has been attributed to the idea that she performs the shōjo ideal, a Japanese understanding of girlhood that is "sweet and innocent on the outside, and considerably autonomous on the inside."77 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland One summer day, like any other, on exactly May the 4th, Alice and her lovely big sister went to relax and read books next to a big tree on the river bank. The hot sun made Alice feel rather lazy and stupid. Even too sleepy to collect flowers to make a daisy chain to wear as a crown, and ever so bored by her sister's book because it had no pictures within it, Alice soon slipped into a midsummer day dream. Suddenly out of no where, she noticed a White Rabbit with pink eyes who was dressed up in a fancy coat while carrying a pocket watch. To Alice, the rabbit seemed to be late for something significant as he rushed right by her in a panic. Filled with a great curiosity that she could not ignore, Alice quickly followed him to see where he was off to in such a hurry. When the Rabbit came to another tree nearby, he went down his dark rabbit-hole. Alice who was running after him followed the rabbit venturing inside of it as well. In the process, Alice accidentally lost her footing in the darkness, fell and tumbled down a long way into a tunnel-hole that went straight down into the ground below. Further and further she went, passing a numerous variety of random objects such as clocks and maps, furniture and books, even globes of the earth and containers of orange marmalade. Everything simply floated in it's place, stuck within the air. After thinking to herself for a rather long time and wondering if she would fall so deep that she'd reach the other side of the earth, Alice began to doze off. She was quickly awakened when she reached the bottom of this tunnel at last and continued her search for the late white rabbit. While looking for the rabbit Alice also discovered a lovely little garden on the other side of a small door that she was much too large to get through. Alice then began to also search for away to be in that beautiful garden which was filled with blooming roses and pretty water fountains. As the adventures got curiouser and curiouser, Alice found herself in a bizzare realm. One of which that went against any type of civilized logic. She suffered a series of wacky escapades in her journey and misadventures filled with complete and utter nonsense. After eating delicious sweets that happened to be laid out and drinking bottles of syrup that she made sure were not marked poison, Alice met unforgettable new friends. Such as a Mouse while swimming in a pool as big as an ocean of her own tears. Also the talking-singing flowers, and a crying baby who turned into a pig. She eventually met a narcissistic blue caterpillar who smoked hooka all day long while he sat upon a mushroom waiting to turn into a butterfly. And Alice encountered a very silly mad hatter who was forever stuck in his own world of a never-ending limbo of tea time. Alice finally made her way into the Queen's rose garden, there she encountered her royal Highness of Wonderland the Queen of Hearts. She was a mean and controlling Queen with a cutthroat personality who dominated even the King who seemed terrified of her, as well as the rest of her royal subjects who resided within her red court. The Queen also forced her subjects to play unfair games of croquet with pink flamingos as mallets. The Queen cheated at these games to win every time, and everybody else let her, for when the Queen became angry or didn't get her way she would lose her temper at anyone over the slightest mistake. Such as someone eating her yummy tarts. and she'd fiercely scream out loud: "OFF WITH THEIR HEAD!" And the unfortunate person, would be taken away to their fate of being beheaded. After Alice made the mistake of upsetting the red Queen, the poor girl ended up in a court of law with a jury full of funny talking animals. There, the people of Wonderland began to gang up on her and wanted to take her head. But Alice was not about to let herself be decapitated over such ridiculous nonsense. She suddenly began to grow larger, and larger until her head hit the top of the ceiling. She was an enormous giant, overpowering the entire court and evoking death threats from the King and Queen. Ultimately, Alice lost her temper finally and screamed back at everyone around her below that they were all nothing but a silly pack of cards. This angered the court and they all began to close in on her as one to attack her under the red Queen's orders. But before they got too close to Alice, she luckily woke up and found herself next to her older sister on the bank once again, realizing that it all was nothing more than a mere dream that she had dreamt on a warm summer day. The End Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there In this sequel to the first story. Our tale deals with a slightly older Alice, and happens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later from her adventure in Wonderland, on November 4th. One random evening, Alice is bored as usual and is left all alone in a room inside her mansion home with no one for company but the crackling of the fireplace. Sitting in a big grown up chair next to a window, Alice watches the snowflakes fall from the sky outside. And wishes she were old enough to join everyone else at the bonfire that is being held. Alice sulks about in a lethargic state. But her pet cat, Dinah on the other hand is now a mother cat of a litter consisting of black and white baby kittens. Looking at her reflection in a looking glass hung up above a bookshelf Alice began wondering what life was like on the other side. When she tried to enter the mirror, she found she could step into it and enter the world on the other side. she finds a book with looking-glass poetry, JabberWocky, whose reversed printing on the pages can be read only by holding it up to the mirror. Alice also observes that the chess pieces in the room have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up. Alice met many new characters. Such as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the White Night and even figures from Mother Goose's nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty. All while on her quest to reach the end of the Wonderland chessboard and become an official Queen. There are many mirror themes in this sequel, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on. Alice suddenly awakens to find herself back in the room of the fireplace and looking glass, in the large armchair she was sitting in while holding one of Dinah's kitten. The story ends with Alice recalling the speculation of events and that everything may have, in fact, been a dream, yet Alice might herself be no more than a someone's dream or figment of someone else's imagination. One final poem is inserted by the author, Lewis Carroll as a sort of epilogue ending which suggests that life itself is but a dream. The End Category:Characters Category:Wonderland Category:Looking-Glass Category:Book Characters